Be nice to see her do a formation air-to-air shoot with PL983 at some point in the future.

It did indeed return to Coningsby late this afternoon about 16:50. I’m very pleased with that colour scheme and am glad to have been able to restore it to a historically correct one from a point in its own history – Filton, Bristol University Air Squadron 1972. Many thanks to Peter R March for his excellent archive material to work with, it really made a difference. I never liked the Tucano-like Black scheme, but I can’t say it was fun stripping 5 layers of paint from the aircraft to get it back to bare metal!

The dayglo is indeed Scothcal made by 3M. The amount of work to prep and apply the dayglo in paint on the areas of this scheme would have made it not economically viable and would not have been in accordance with the related historical A.P. and D.H. drawing for the application of the scheme. I applied it directly to the paint as per the A.P. and it has a clear edge seal to prevent lifting at “high-speed”!
It is an arduous process and to get the spacing correct took a lot of patience and not-surprisingly working for hours at close visual proximity when applying it did indeed give me a BIG headache 🙁 The durability and fade resistance of dayglo is well known so there is no need to debate it. That’s the material it had on at Bristol UAS in 1972 and that’s what is carries now. The scheme was very interesting to research and apply and I found it more rewarding and unusual than doing the scheme for PA474, which was a big privilege but ultimately nothing out of the ordinary, just on a bigger scale than Spitfires/Hurricanes/ Blenheim etc. Going back to the dayglo, it was a challenge to apply to the leading edges and I certainly wouldn’t envy the painters that had to put it on all those Varsities/Hastings and Bevelies back in the ’60’s…

Hope that helps clarify your question.

Roobarb

It’s the correct red this time around, I’ve made sure of that! All will be revealed once we have applied the rest of the markings and re-covered the flying controls. You’ll all just have to wait and see. The civvy reg was for the ferry flight only but certainly got the Paparazzi excited. There will be other minor detailed alterations as well to improve its look still further, just be patient.

Roobarb

Didn’t it get an unexpected bath a while ago?

It will only be a few months and the projected defence cuts will see the whole lot “available”, maybe a few Apaches too. “Step into the portakabin, we can do a nice deal… Anyone want a brand new aircraft carrier with no aircraft? We can do a good deal on her ‘cos she’s a bit leaky. Let’s say buy one get one (unfinished) free? How about it, we can throw in a few bases for housing development or solar farms, maybe a bit of planning permission thrown in too? Roll up, roll up, everything must go. We’ve got statistics to massage and contracts to cancel, oh and a few thousand personnel to make redundant. Gotta get those NHS waiting times down somehow”…

Nice to see the Harvard back again. We painted it in those colours at ARC when it was sold by Silver Victory to Ed Russell a long time ago now. Looks like Billy Kelly’s paint job has stood the test of time.

Interestingly the “Charles Church Spitfires” chosen aerial and the “Jet Cap Aviation” colour scheme have been there far longer than the original Vickers-Supermarine fitted aerial or any of PT462’s “original” colour schemes, RAF, Israeli or Charles Church even. So which one has the greater claim to being the greater part of this Spitfire’s own history?